Motherhood Meets Mastectomies

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Freedom’s Road

At last week’s post-op appointment, my doctor told me that everything looked great and to expect my swelling to increase over the next week. Tomorrow will be two weeks since I had the fat grafting procedure. That’s supposed to be the peak of post-lipo swelling. I’m definitely swollen and the bruising, although still there, is starting to fade. I can already see that the results are pretty incredible.

The rippling in my breasts seems to be mostly gone. As I study my new boobs, I think I see a faint ripple here or there, but nothing like the ocean waves that I saw before. However, now I see why my surgeon warned me that usually fat grafting has to be done twice. He said they took out about 1200 cc’s of fat out of my legs and injected roughly 250 cc’s into the breasts. So he took a little extra just for the fun of it (I’m telling myself that was an early birthday present. 32 is looking a lot better!). Not all of the fat that was injected is expected to “take”. I asked him where the rest of it would go. In my head, I was picturing how fat separates and rises to the surface when you cook chicken soup and that gooey, yellowish junk needs to be skimmed off. Would I have to start skimming fat off of my boobs at the end of the day? Gross! No, he said, “it dissipates just as fat would normally do so?” This boggled my mind, as well. As I started to say, “Wait… how does that happen naturally?” I stopped myself and realized, “Oh…. like when people work out and the fat “melts away”. Gotcha!” (Maybe if I had tried that earlier, I wouldn’t have had 1200 cc’s to take out. Genius!)

So as I am still a work in progress and my swelling and fat almost miraculously disappear, I continue to feel sore and more tired than usual. I am happy to be driving again and to feel independent with my daughters. I loved having the help of my parents and my mother-in-law, but I’m thrilled to not take away from their time anymore and to be so reliant on them. I’ve gotten myself into the mindset that I am going to be sore, but it will get better with time. Some people have chronic pain, but this will be fleeting. Pushing myself and doing more things on my own, for and with my daughters, is exactly what I need to get better. And although I’m pretty sure he wasn’t referring to recovery period after liposuction, JFK said, “The best road to progress is freedom’s road.”